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Pachomius

Founder of the monasteries of Tabennisi in Upper Egyptdied AD 346Also: Pachomius the Great, Pakhom

An Egyptian convert and former conscript who, about 320, organised monks into communities living under a common rule. Jerome names him among the founders of the common life.

Pachomius was born to pagan parents in the Thebaid. His Life says that he was conscripted at twenty, met Christians who fed the recruits, was baptised on his release and trained under the hermit Palamon (Life of Pachomius 2–6). At Tabennisi he heard a call to build a monastery and gathered a community there under a rule (Life of Pachomius 12). He died on 9 May in a year the Life does not name, which scholars place in 346 (Life of Pachomius 53).

Jerome names him, with his successors Theodore and Horsiesius, as the first to found monasteries of the common life in Egypt (Rule of Pachomius Jerome’s preface 1). Palladius reports seven thousand monks living under his rule about 420 (Palladius, Lausiac History 32.7). See Pachomius Founds Communal Monasticism.

In the timeline

  1. about AD 320, estimated date
    Pachomius Founds Communal Monasticism

    At Tabennisi in Upper Egypt, Pachomius gathers monks into a walled community with a common rule, shared meals and work, and a single superior. By his death there are several houses of men and women, and his rule is later translated for the West.

Primary sources

Life of Pachomius (Latin version of Dionysius Exiguus)

Anonymous Greek author; Latin translation by Dionysius Exiguus · Greek original late fourth century; this Latin version early sixth century · Latin, from Greek

The Rule of Pachomius, in Jerome’s Latin translation

Pachomius and his successors; translated and prefaced by Jerome · Rules of the fourth century; Latin translation c. AD 404 · Latin, from a Greek version of the Coptic

Lausiac History

Palladius of Helenopolis · c. AD 419–420 · Greek

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